The Marmalade Shore

“No married man should embark upon any project lasting in excess of nine months” is one of my more useful aphorisms, alongside, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a man embarks upon a relationship he fails to give adequate moment to the ninety-nine hundredths of his life that will not be spent having sex.” In any event, The Marmalade Shore bears witness to the former wisdom, its release delayed for, gosh, three years due to minor edits, proofing, illustration, layout and – oh yes, that’s right – fatherhood. At long last, however, it is available for public consumption as a beautifully illustrated paperback novel, and I am very proud of both it and myself.

Back in late 2005, when I had completed my initial round of finishing touches and begun distributing spiral-bound copies to friends and family, I distinctly remember my chagrin that all and sundry were considerably more fascinated by my contemporaneous conception of a fetus than with my 84 000 words of darkly comedic swashbuckling adventure. This despite the fact that the former was unpremeditated and, with respect to my involvement in the process, took perhaps half an hour; whilst the latter had taken me all year and a considerable proportion of my intellect.

Rachel’s cousin Jessica designed the cover and produced the chapter illustrations, and to her, much thanks! She brilliantly captured both the gothic and period sensibilities of the text, and the result is IMHO marvelous, and will be an enormous complement to your coffee table / bookshelf, where you may wish to file it alongside some well-thumbed Penguin classics. Really, if you even vaguely tolerate the nonsense I pen here at semi-regular intervals, then you are pretty much guaranteed to enjoy my novel, which has benefitted from both an editor and a coherent plot. Learn more and read the first chapter online at themarmaladeshore.com. They go, fly my children, spread the good words to the far corners of this globe!